
In VH1's new show Strip Search, 15 hunks compete for a spot in the well-chiseled ranks of Vegas' sizzling male revue, Thunder from Down Under. They aren't the first entertainers who have jumped on stage in nothing but baby oil and a dream. At various times in their careers, actresses such as
Some strippers will actually try to convince you they're dancers. '80s uber-producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson decided to take them at their word, and crafted a G-string-to-leg-warmers story of a Philadelphia steelworker who works her way up from men's club hottie to ballet school hopeful. Assisted by Jennifer Beals' charismatic performance, a body double, and a great soundtrack, Flashdance was a smash. Showgirls' promised to lift the lid off of Vegas' seamier side, but turned out to be a "so bad it's good" camp classic. Saved by the Bell's Elizabeth Berkley is the clueless starlet who used to eat dog food and now has to swallow a lot worse as a lap-dancer who wants to see her name in neon. Berkley's acrobatic gyrations suggest she missed her real calling as an Olympic gymnast. Hot off of Indecent Proposal and Disclosure, Demi Moore was paid a record $12 million to bare her enhanced all in this Carl Hiaasen adaptation. Her single mother There's something about stripping and steelworkers. A group of laid off British welders are getting increasingly desperate, until Trainspotting's Robert Carlyle comes up with an idea. These men's men will become a low-rent Chippendales. Much bopping to "Hot Stuff" ensues, but the hit comedy -- which later became a Broadway musical - is less about seeing these Brits' pale arses than trying to find some dignity in this most undignified form of labor. If there's a heart in this roundelay of transatlantic deception, it belongs to Natalie Portman's Alice, a forlorn American stripper in London. She finds herself torn between Jude Law's novelist and Clive Owen's spiteful doctor. Like her namesake, Alice appears lost in a Wonderland of deception, until it turns out that like every great stripper, she's only allowed us a brief peek at the real her. |
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